After years of drought, a deadly flood marked a new era
for the Republican River Valley, one in which the federal government and its
“New Deal” programs played a significant role in the aftermath of natural
disaster.

For a month in late summer 1875 the nation’s gaze was
drawn to proceedings at the remote Red Cloud Agency in northwestern Nebraska,
where the federal government sought unsuccessfully to convince Lakota leaders
to cede ownership of the Black Hills.

NH

97

01

2016

016

031

Daryl

Webb

Editor

“The Best War I Ever Expect to Have”: Hall County
Doughboys’ Letters Home

Clarence W Bonham’s photos are some of the finest early
views of the North Platte Valley in the Scottsbluff-Gering vicinity, and
document a crucial moment in the valley’s history: the beginning of
large-scale irrigation projects that would soon transform the region’s
economy.

NH

97

02

2016

053

072

Nick

Batter

Author

The Wayfaring Judge: Woodrough and Organized Crime in the
US District Court

Joseph William Woodrough’s service on the US District Court
for the District of Nebraska coincided with the Prohibition era. Woodrough
sought to crack down on organized crime, but was also committed to protecting
people’s constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. This put
him at odds both with crime bosses and with law enforcement officials.

Between 1882 and 1894 US soldiers fired lead bullets by
the ton into the butts of the Department of the Platte’s target ranges first
located near Fort Omaha and later near Bellevue. Their story reveals how a
system of target practice initiated in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century helped produce an “army of marksmen” by the early years of the
twentieth.

NH

97

02

2016

091

106

David

Bristow

Author

P.S.: Tunneling the Monument, 1935

Scotts Bluff National Monument

NH

97

02

2016

115

115

Randy

Kane

Author

“Flagpole Affair” at Red Cloud Agency (The): An Incident
in the Cultural Transition of the Oglala Lakota

On October 23, 1874, Lakota warriors entered Red Cloud
Agency and chopped up the pole that agent John J Saville planned to use to
fly the American flag. The stage was now set for an armed confrontation, and
only decisive action by Lakota leaders and US troops prevented bloodshed.

NH

97

03

2016

117

126

Jo L

Wetherilt Behrens

Author

Women at the Intersection of Secular and Spiritual
Community: The Deaconess Program in Episcopal Bishop Robert Harper Clarkson’s
Nebraska Diocese

In the 1870s and 1880s, the work of Episcopal deaconesses
in Nebraska was reflective of women’s growing professional role beyond the
home, and their efforts were extensive and unique in diocesan history. Among
their responsibilities was the management of a new hospital that would
eventually bear the bishop’s name.

NH

97

03

2016

127

148

Jerrald K

Pfabe

Author

Divorce in Seward County, Nebraska, 1869-1906

294 divorce cases were filed in the Seward County District
Court from 1869 to 1906, which allows comparison with statewide and national
data.

NH

97

03

2016

149

164

David

Bristow

Author

P.S.: He’s Not Bitter

Just Divorced, from 1934 Omaha World Herald

NH

97

03

2016

171

171

James E

Potter

Author

State Flag and the Great Seal (The): The Historical Ups
and Downs of Two Nebraska Icons

Nebraska adopted a state seal in 1867, and in 1925 used
the seal as the basis for a state flag. The seal includes symbols of the
state’s early history, but has been criticized for a lack of artistic merit.
The state capitol itself contains alternate designs. The on-again, off-again
controversy speaks to Nebraskans’ different ideas about what is most
important about their state and how to best symbolize it.

NH

97

04

2016

173

184

Paul Emory

Putz

Author

Big-League Basketball Comes to Omaha: A History of the “Omahawks”

In the fall of 1947, America briefly had three major
professional basketball leagues. The newest of these, the Professional Basketball
League of America, included a franchise in Omaha. With five home-grown
players, the story of the Omahawks is the story of the limits and
possibilities for Nebraskans chasing pro dreams in the postwar years.

NH

97

04

2016

185

198

Ann

Jim

Dayle

Gayle

Bleed

Barr

Williamson

Starr

Authors

Creation of Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (The)

Nebraska’s natural resources used to be governed by a
multitude of single-purpose, local districts that lacked sufficient size,
authority, and funding to be effective. In 1972 the state created a unique
system that consolidated authority in two dozen districts governed by
locally-elected boards. The districts were granted taxing authority and broad
powers over natural resources. An oral history project reveals how Nebraska
took this bold step

On the evening of August 16, 1955, Lincoln residents were
startled to see smoke rising from the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Rioting
inmates had set fire to their workplaces, and police and national guardsmen
gathered to take back the prison by force if necessary. The event culminated
in a series of violent protests meant to draw attention to inhumane
conditions and abuse by guards.

Soccer arrived surprisingly early in Nebraska’s largest
city, with the first public match played in 1880. Even as American collegiate
football was gaining popularity, local soccer aficionados (many of whom were
immigrants) argued that their sport was “a game of science, skill, and
gentlemanliness” destined to become “the national winter game of America.”

NH

96

01

2015

014

025

Roger P

Davis

Author

The Nebraska Commission on Mexican-Americans at the
Crossroads: The Dilemma of False Expectations—Neither Service nor Power,
1973-1980

Nebraska was the first state to establish a statutory
agency to advocate on behalf of its Latino population. During the
commission’s turbulent early years, conflicting expectations and
interpersonal issues undermined the agency’s reputation despite a clear
record of success in providing direct services to the people.

NH

96

01

2015

026

041

Thomas M

Spencer

Author

“Everything Seems to be Going Backwards These Days”: The
Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben in Omaha

Founded in 1895 to promote Omaha, Ak-Sar-Ben was modeled
after organizations in St Louis and Kansas City, but soon followed its own
path, leaving a legacy of elite society, community philanthropy, political
influence, and, of course, horse racing.

Kearney has long promoted itself as the “Midway City”
located halfway between the coasts, exactly 1,733 miles from Boston and San
Francisco. That mileage, however, long appeared to match no known historical
route – until now.

NH

96

02

2015

66

73

Amy Helene

Forss

Author

“One Can Be an Influence”: Nebraska Farm Wife Doris
Royal’s Successful Campaign Against the Widow’s Tax

“Do you realize I haven’t contributed a dime to this farm
today according to the IRS?” Doris Royal told her husband after a twelve-hour
day of pitching hay and feeding cattle. Starting in 1975, Royal launched a
prolonged bu ultimately successful campaign to reform federal inheritance tax
laws.

NH

96

02

2015

74

83

Kent

Morgan

Author

The 1890 Lincoln Giants: Professional Baseball’s Unlikely
Return to Nebraska’s Capital City

Though it sounds unlikely, an all-black team, led by a
black manager and owned largely by a consortium of black entrepreneurs,
played a season in an otherwise all-white league which was itself formed
under the influence of two enterprising young black men from Omaha.

NH

96

02

2014

84

99

Juliet

Sorenson

Author

Plains Crusader: C A Sorensen’s Assault on Organized Crime
and the Political Machine in Omaha

A century later, a description of Hord’s cattle-feeding
operation in Central City still sounds modern, both in its massive scale and
its use of technology. But Hord began in the era of the open range cowboy; in
his career we see the birth of the modern livestock industry.

Few remember Frank Crane today, but as a syndicated
columnist he became one of America’s most popular and oft-quoted writers.
Earlier, as a dynamic young Methodist minister in Omaha, he threw himself
into local politics with a reformer’s zeal, sharpening his ability to market
himself and to communicate effectively with common men and women.

NH

96

03

2015

136

152

L Robert

Puschendorf

Author

Lifting Our People Out of the Mud: The Good Roads Movement
in Nebraska

Nebraska’s early roads were unmarked trails across the
countryside and were seen as the concern of individual locales rather than of
the state or federal government. A nationwide “Good Roads” movement began in
the 1880s with an alliance of bicycle enthusiasts and then gained momentum
with the coming of the automobile.

At the time of his death in 1939, humorist Walt Mason was
considered to be one of the most widely read—if not the most polished—of
living poets. Before gaining national fame, Mason spent twenty years in
Nebraska writing for the Daily Nebraska State Journal and other
papers.

Nebraska’s Japanese remained a small percentage of the
population and generally tried to avoid publicity. Richi Ugai of North Platte
was an exception. The restaurateur and hotel owner became a locally-prominent
businessman in the early twentieth century, prospering even through World War
II.

During his
lifetime Kennard was widely known as the ”Father of Lincoln,” and he had a
strong claim to the title. He was part of the three-man commission that
selected the tiny village of Lancaster as the new state capital, and he exercised
a broad influence in both politics and business.

The year of Big
Elk’s death has long been misreported. New research not only corrects the
date, but also provides new details about the circumstances surrounding the
powerful chief’s death and burial at Bellevue in 1848.

Traveling with
two Swedish entrepreneurs, in 1874 three Pawnee men from Nebraska became the
first Native Americans to tour Scandinavia, performing native dances and
customs for the public. One of the three, White Fox, died in Sweden, where a
scientist claimed his body and had his head and torso taxidermied and
mounted. The author follows the story from the arrival of the Swedish men in
the United States to the return of White Fox’s remains to the Pawnee Nation
in 1996.

Following their tradition of hiring top New York designers
for their coronation ball gowns, in 1961 Ak-Sar-Ben turned to Ann Lowe, the
first African American designer to establish a couture salon on Madison
Avenue. Though it’s difficult to imagine a designer of Lowe’s caliber
remaining virtually unknown, that is exactly what happened. Fortunately, her
association with Ak-Sar-Ben provides “a treasure chest of information about
the work of this mysterious fashion personality.”

NH

95

03

2014

134

143

Patricia C

Gaster

Author

William Jennings Bryan, Billy Sunday, and the Prohibition
Party Ticket of 1920

Although prohibition was the law of the land by 1920, many
prohibitionists feared that the next presidential administration might not
enforce the law vigorously, and they tried to persuade three-time Democratic
nominee William Jennings Bryan and revivalist Billy Sunday to accept
nominations at the party’s national convention in Lincoln.

In the spring of 1968 the campaigns of Michigan Governor
George Romney, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and former Vice
President Richard Nixon all set their sights on Nebraska’s “all-star primary”
as an important early test of strength.

Completed in 1936, Fairbanks’s monument is perhaps one of
America’s most moving displays of public sculpture paying tribute to pioneers
as they moved westward, often suffering great personal losses along the way.

Shot down over the Pacific and stranded on a Japanese-held
Philippine island, Lincoln resident John Doyle found himself in desperate
circumstances in late 1944. Decades later, he told his story to fellow
Lincoln resident Sam Van Pelt. This remarkable interview is published here
for the first time.

Three Nebraskans—John J. Pershing, Charles E. Magoon, and
George D. Meiklejohn—did much to shape U.S. colonial policy in the wake of
the Spanish-American War. Their views were shaped by their western frontier
background, “which strongly conditioned their understanding of the relations
between land and political power.”

How is it that four non-existent western Nebraska counties
could appear on maps in 1866 and remain on virtually all territorial and
state maps for nearly a decade? The story of how this happened reveals the
evolving process of county formation during Nebraska’s transition to
statehood, and also shows how publishers of maps gathered information about
the development of remote areas.

Though he is little remembered today, the Rev. Charles
Savidge was a modern innovator, a religious entrepreneur whose product was an
idealized version of the old-time Methodism of America’s recent past, applied
in practical ways to problems in the emerging industrialized city of Omaha.

Potter explores the
nineteenth-century lives of real cowboys, mostly hard-working, underpaid,
transient laborers on horseback. They rarely appeared in history books unless
they were accused of crimes. A few became prominent ranch owners or
politicians when the end of the open range era eliminated cattle drives and roundups.

By the early twentieth century
most American births were attended by physicians, but Lincoln’s

Germans from Russia preferred
their traditional midwives. Unable to persuade women to switch to physicians,
the local health department instead provided medical training for midwives –
an example of a public health agency

Born in
Plattsmouth and raised in Falls City, John Falter became one of the nation's
most successful illustrators because he knew how to capture the spirit of the
times. His illustrations for ads, articles, and magazine covers provide a
window into mid-twentieth century American culture.

NH

93

01

2012

002

027

Chris

Rasmussen

Author

Vox Populi of Omaha: Todd Storz and the Top 40
Radio Format in American Culture

Omaha radio
station owner Todd Storz played a key role in pioneering the Top 40 format in
the 1950s. He was a figure of national significance, permanently changing
radio programming with an approach that was "vibrantly populist, crassly
commercial, and undeniably young."

Omaha city
leaders touted the Jobbers Canyon warehouse district as a key to downtown
redevelopment, before ConAgra decided it wanted the land. Thus ensued the
largest-ever demolition of a district listed on the National Register of
Historic Places

In July 1909, Nebraskans witnessed firsthand
the most popular and spectacular Glidden Tour. This multi-state driving tour
was not a race; it was a reliability run meant to challenge the driving
skills of early automobilists and the reliability of their machines. The
event promoted the automobile as a practical and desirable means of travel-a
message that Nebraskans were already primed to accept.

Located in what is now known as Lincoln's Haymarket
District, the St. Charles Hotel served city residents and the traveling
public from the 1860s until 1918, during which time Lincoln grew from a
frontier settlement to a mature capital city. The hotel's story is
intertwined with that of Catherine "Kate" Martin, an Irish
immigrant whose career spanned four decades, three husbands, and two fires.

Whether the victims were accused of horse theft, murder,
or rape, lynching is often viewed as frontier vigilantism that operated
before the establishment of courts and law enforcement. This notion, however,
does not square with the historical record of the more than fifty Nebraskans
who died at the hands of lynch mobs.

Founded and run by women, the Terri Lee Company of
Lincoln, Nebraska, was ahead of its time, introducing plastic dolls,
including several black dolls, as early as 1947. With high-quality production
standards and clever marketing materials that promoted Terri Lee as a
companion and not just a doll, the toy caught the hearts and imaginations of little
girls in a revolutionary way.

NH

93

04

2012

162

181

Amanda N

Johnson

Author

Illuminating the west: The Wonder of Electric Lighting at
Omaha's Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898

Electric lighting was as
important to the Omaha fair as the Ferris Wheel was to Chicago’s 1893
Columbian Exposition: a focal point that garnered publicity and gate receipts
while demonstrating the West’s technological and economic progress. The
fair’s extensive use of outdoor incandescent lighting was unprecedented and
an object of wonder to fairgoers.

Dan Desdunes lived a remarkable life as a bandleader,
educator, and civil rights activist. In his native New Orleans, he played a
key role in an unsuccessful legal challenge to railway segregation that led
to the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision. In
Omaha, he became a successful bandleader who also volunteered at Father
Flanagan's Boys Home, where he trained the boys for fundraising musical
tours.

An iconic Solomon Butcher photograph portrays a frontier
newspaper office in Broken Bow. But the story of the two men who founded the
short-lived paper has not been told until now. They came to central Nebraska
full of ambition, but their lives soon went in very different directions.

A labor shortage during World War I left western Nebraska
potato farmers facing the loss of their crop. They brought in Lakota (Sioux)
Indians as harvesters, beginning a tradition that lasted from 1917 through
the 1950s. The story is one both of prejudice and understanding, cooperation
and conflict--and of long-lasting relationships forged by economic necessity.

NH

92

03

2011

124

147

James E

Potter

Author

Horses: The Army's Achilles' Heel in the Civil War Plains
Campaigns of 1864-1865

Civil War
armies relied heavily on horses. Armies in the field equipped with artillery,
cavalry, and supply trains required one horse or mule, on average, for every
two men. Horses fit for service became scarce by the war's final years. Far
from the major eastern battlefields, regiments such as the First Nebraska
Volunteer Cavalry felt the brunt of the equine shortage.

NH

92

04

2011

158

169

Kristin

Mapel Bloomberg

Author

"How shall We Make Beatrice Grow!" Clara Bewick
Colby and the Beatrice Public Library Association in the 1870s

For a young
frontier town like Beatrice, a library wasn't just about books. It was also a
means for propagating social values, and it created pathways for women to
exercise leadership in the community. The town's first privately funded
library faced challenges of censorship, public indifference, and competition
from an unexpected rival.

NH

92

04

2011

170

183

Todd

Guenther

Author

"The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand": Rev. Russel
Taylor and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1920s Omaha

In the
racially charged atmosphere of 1920s Omaha, Russel Taylor-a minister,
teacher, musician, activist, and former homesteader-threw himself into the
struggle for dignity and civil rights. His story illustrates some of the
difficulties facing black leaders during the generations between the end of
slavery and the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s.

The United States Army had an almost impossible task to
perform during the last half of the nineteenth century. Fewer than 15,000 men
guarded some 3,000 miles of frontier and an equal length of seacoast.

After serving in Missouri and Arkansas in the Civil War,
the First Nebraska Volunteer Cavalry was transferred to the Platte Valley to
guard the transcontinental telegraph line and overland stagecoach stations.
Pvt August Scherneckau’s diary tells of duty marked by exhausting riding,
billowing dust, tormenting insects, chilling winds, numbing boredom, and an
occasional dash after Indians.

From 1877 until well after
1900, Lincoln was the home of a vigorous temperance reform club that was said
to surpass “in point of numbers, influence, and power any temperance club
known in this country.”

Camp Robinson and Camp Sheridan, both founded in 1874, had
much in common. Camp Robinson had a tumultuous history in the 1870s,
however, while Camp Sheridan, under the influence of the leader Spotted Tail,
existed quietly and then closed in 1881. This article includes lists of the
units stationed at Camp Sheridan, the camp’s commanding officers and its
doctors.

A recent book examines the politics and social changes of
big-time college football during the past fifty years. Our reviewer examines
issues of race, power, and money in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s
storied football program.

Appleton, a young clerk at the Red Cloud Agency, wrote to
his family just weeks before he was fatally shot by a Minneconjou warrior.
His letter describes an Indian dance that he had seen and begs for news of
family and friends.

Did a legendary Sandhills baseball game between the Spade
and Diamond Bar ranches really take place in 1890? It turns out that a
hilarious 1916 account of the game was based on real people and real
events…with some improvements

Three times in the nineteenth century Nebraska considered
granting full suffrage to women. When the third attempt ended in a
resounding defeat in 1882, the suffrage movement abandoned the goal of
achieving legislative change one state at a time. The national campaign
waged after that Nebraska defeat culminated in the passage and ratification
of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution thirty years later.

The Reverend Samuel Dutton Hinman served for seventeen
years as an Episcopal missionary, government translator and advocate for the
Dakota. In 1878 his superior dismissed him in disgrace because of persistent
rumors of impropriety. The author suggests that Hinman’s reputation as an “Indian
lover” may have been responsible for the rumors

Though many Nebraskans served in the Great War, we have
few war narratives written by them. Fred Pickering was a farmer from Ulysses,
Nebraska, who wrote a lively account of army life for the folks back home.

Nebraska Farmer magazine was the only outlet most
rural Nebraska children had to reach the world outside their schools and
farms. For half a century, they voiced their dreams, concerns, and questions
in the magazine’s youth column.

During the 1870s-1890s “Omaha Charley” Bristol traveled
the dime museum and lecture hall circuit, giving lectures about Indian life
and culture. Visitors viewed his photographs and Indian artifacts and saw
performances by entertainers. Although some items were not authentic, the
Bristol collection educated and continues to educate the public about
Nebraska’s Native Americans and its “Wild West” era.

In 1986 downtown Omaha saw the loss of one major employer
(Enron) and was facing the potential loss of another (ConAgra). The
riverfront, meanwhile, was an industrial zone dominated by a lead refinery.
Omaha’s return to the river involved an extensive reconceptualization of the
downtown and riverfront.

The Hall brothers’ formative years in Nebraska, and those
of the youngest brother, Joyce Hall, became the inspiration that brought him
success as the founder of Hallmark Cards, Inc., the world’s foremost supplier
of greeting cards.

Prince Hall Masonry is an African American fraternal
organization that arose because blacks were excluded from white Masonic
lodges. The Prince Hall Mason Grand Lodge of Nebraska (PHGLN) nearly died out
in the 1930s and then soared to new heights during the 1950s. This article
details the turbulent thirty years between the onset of the Great Depression
and the dawn of the 1960s.

The idea that Nebraska should provide living quarters for
its governors was slow to catch on. Finally, in 1899 the state purchased a
house that became the first of two official residences in which Nebraska
governors have lived.

Political and social changes after World War II eventually
resulted in more equitable treatment for the Latino community in Nebraska.
Although that community’s splinter groups argued for years over concepts

of identity and strategies for effective action, in 1972
Nebraska became the first state in the nation to establish a

Statutory agency charged with advocacy on behalf of the
Hispanic population.

Shared meals were the cornerstone of events and
celebrations in Nebraska’s early years, offering rural families a chance to
gather, socialize, and escape the lonely drudgery that filled much of their
lives.

In 1866 Charles Savage made the earliest known photograph
of Chimney Rock and several other rare images, providing a unique visual
record of one of the last years of wagon travel along Nebraska’s Great Platte
River Road.

This article provides vivid details of ex-slave African
American families lives as they became homesteaders in Nebraska in the late
nineteenth century and in Wyoming in the early twentieth century. In 1908
they founded the town of Empire, Wyoming, about thirty miles northwest of
Scottsbluff. They settled there because of a Wyoming school segregation law
that allowed the black settlers to form their own public school and hire
their own teacher. In most ways, the lives of these black settlers at Empire
differed little from those of their white contemporaries. Drought and a poor
agricultural economy eventually led to the community’s abandonment by the
mid-1920s.

Nineteenth-century photographers specialized in portraits
but also sold views of general interest. On their way to take pictures of
the Black Hills gold rush, eight hotographers visited the Red Cloud and
Spotted Tail Agencies between 1874 and 1877. The article includes short
biographies of the photographers, details of their work at the agencies, and
locations of archives of their agency photographs.

Long before Nebraska ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to
the US Constitution, anti-alcohol sentiment was a contentious force in
territorial and state politics. The Daily Bumble Bee figured
prominently in the fight for Prohibition in 1890 in Nebraska, though it
survived less than one week. It ceased publication as soon as the
results of the 1890 election were definitely known, having provided a
last-minute boost to the pro-amendment cause.

Highly talented, quietly indomitable, but still largely
overlooked in the history of art in Nebraska, twelve nineteenth and early
twentieth century women left an enduring artistic legacy and greatly
influenced the arts in this young prairie state.

Nebraskans, like other Americans, were generally unaware
of their specific European connections and identities in the 1950s. Only
more recently has ethnicity has come to be recognized as a source of Nebraska
beliefs and values.

A famous military commander and
preacher, Chivington was a very controversial figure. He led the force that
butchered a sleeping Indian village in the Sand Creek Massacre. His private
life included lying, theft, arson, and marriage to his former daughter-in-law,
whom he then abandoned.

The tragedy of the Ponca Indians led to
Nebraska’s last significant land acquisition, Boyd County. The story of how
the northern boundary of Nebraska was negotiated in the 1880s includes
government ineptitude and bad faith, political manipulation, and the total
disruption of the Poncas’ lives.

The Lone Oak building, five
miles west of Lincoln on U S Highway 6, built in 1944 and occupied in 1945,
was constructed with straw bale technology. The two-story building in Lincoln
appeared to be the embodiment of modernity using large, fixed, plate glass
windows and modernistic design. The selection of the use of walls built of
bales of hay was influenced by wartime wood and steel shortages.

On August 26, 1958, the owners
of The Lone Oak Building six miles west of Lincoln, were found dead of carbon
monoxide poisoning. This is the story of their deaths and the ensuing legal battles
of the families of the deceased, Thomas M Bentley and Nola Bailey.

Today the name Duncan Hines is
associated only with packaged foods, but in the middle of the twentieth
century, Duncan Hines was a food critic whose recommendations strongly
influenced American’s restaurant choices.

This is the story of the military career of a little-known
Nebraska Officer, who served in both the Spanish-American and
Philippine-American wars. As such, it is a case study in the evolution of
the American "citizen soldier.

Frank H Spearman, a prolific
writer of railroad fiction, created courageous characters who risked all for
order and progress. His writing style may seem idealistic and stilted today,
but his early stories are reservoirs of cultural and historical value to
Nebraskans. They offer rich profiles of men who dared to run clattering,
primitive machines across the Plains, forging a lifeline to settlers.

In the First World War, Nebraska had the opportunity to
share of one million dollars that the War Council hoped to raise by October
1, 1917, to build, equip, and stock libraries for soldiers in thirty-two
camps and cantonments. It was believed that the citizen army would be more
effective and efficient if the troops lived clean, intelligent, and moral
lives, and the American Library Association worked diligently to support the
war effort by working toward that end.

Two Pennsylvania members of the Church of
the Brethren visited the Pawnee in Nebraska in 1851 to determine whether the
Indians would welcome the presence of missionaries. Heavy rains made tent
camping and river crossings very difficult for the travelers. This account of
their trip concludes with a description of the “Manner and Customs of the
Pawnee” that emphasizes the subservient role of Pawnee women.

"Wild Bill" Hickok, billed as
"the most celebrated Scout and Hunter of the Plains," began his
show-business career in 1872 in Niagara Falls with a staged hunt and a few
weary buffalo captured in Nebraska.

When a young white woman, Maud Rubel, was
found dead in South Omaha, suspects included Sam Payne, an African-American
who had lived in a building near the crime scene. In spite of conflicting
eyewitness reports and the fact that Payne recanted his original confession,
he was convicted. Racial beliefs of the day, expressed in newspaper
articles, played a role in his sentencing. After ten years in prison Payne
was pardoned by the governor.

Four men convicted of violent murders
committed between 1888 and 1890 were all hanged in Nebraska in 1891, although
multiple executions in the state in a single year were exceptional. The
author describes the crimes, arrests, trials, and deaths of the four men.

From a dozen cowboys at the chuck wagon to a
chic 1953 housewife making cookies in her Lincoln kitchen, photographs from
the NSHS archives show that eating is the most universal of cultural
activities.

The McCook Daily Gazette was the first newspaper to deliver by air on a
regular basis. Harry D Strunk, publisher of the Gazette, adopted air
delivery to increase recognition of the purchasing power of farm families,
poor road conditions, rising postal rates, and the public’s fascination with
aviation.

Buffalo Bill Cody and Doc Carver were partners during the
1883 season of Cody and Carver’s Wild West, a touring outdoor western
show. Their partnership dissolved after one year, and their bitter legal
dispute over control of the name “Wild West” made them adversaries for the
rest of their lives.

Omaha Police Detective Tom Ring was gunned down in 1915.
A statewide search for his killer ended with the death of a Mexican
immigrant, Juan Gonzalez. Spectators did not agree about the circumstances
of Gonzalez’s death, but there is evidence of racist hysteria directed
against him.

The lawyers who were among the early settlers in the
Platte Valley made important contributions as community builders. Their
professional achievements contradict the notion that the Great Plains was a
lawless region.

Darwin‟s diary recounts his 1849 trip from Tennessee
to the gold mines of California, emphasizing his encounters with Indians,
traders, and fur trappers. The section reproduced in this article extends
from his arrival in western Iowa to his departure from Fort Laramie.

The Niobrara Scenic River Designation Act of 1991 ended a
prolonged struggle between those who would have preferred to dam the river
and those who saw it as an environmental treasure. The legislation sought to
permanently preserve the Niobrara while protecting the interests of local
landowners.

The Rawhide legend is associated with the mid-nineteenth
century overland migrations of the American West. Shooting an Indian without
provocation and skinning a man alive are consistent themes in many versions
of the story. This article includes variations on the basic tale and an
alternate explanation for places named Rawhide.

Beginning in 1867, when a
group of interested Omaha citizens met to form the Omaha Base Ball Club,
organized baseball struggled to maintain itself in Nebraska as it did all
over the country. Clubs and leagues came and went, battling indifferent
management, inadequate financing, small audiences, and uneven performance.

Civil War veterans brought baseball with them on their
westward migration to Nebraska. As this collection of photographs shows, most
small towns could field a team of local players by the end of the nineteenth
century.

In 1892, the Nebraska State League for baseball was
partially integrated. Controversy abounded over whether “colored” players had
both the ability to play and the ability to be “colored gentlemen.” The
League’s early demise was only partially due to the rampant racial
controversy. Finances and contract jumping also played a part.

The
Nebraska Indians baseball team played longer and more successfully than the
many other American Indian professional teams of the early twentieth century.
The players confronted discrimination, but their skilled performances earned
the admiration of baseball fans.

Achievements of the Society in the period ending in 2003
include the construction of the permanent visitor center at Chimney Rock and
important advances in conservation and digital imaging. A “Milestones”
section at the end of the article lists historic properties, exhibitions,
awards, publications, and members of the governing board.

Fletcher’s letter, based on her experience on the Omaha
Reservation, recommends that the government recognize the individual needs of
different Indian groups. She describes the daily life of the Omahas and
offers practical strategies that would help to ensure their adaptation to
reservation life.

Solomon D Butcher’s 1886 photograph of the Sylvester Rawding
homestead at West Union, Custer County, Nebraska, has appeared many times.
This article delves into more minute details now evident with digital
scanning technology.

The editor’s note and an introductory essay by Edward F
Zimmer and Abigail B Davis explain the significance of this traveling
exhibition of forty early twentieth-century portraits made in Lincoln by John
Johnson. They provide an insider’s view of a small but thriving African
American community in a growing city. Notes following the photographs
identify some of the people and sites pictured.

This list includes the Historical Society’s most
significant resources related to the African American experience in
Nebraska. It describes archival collections, gives bibliographical
information for library materials, and provides contact information for other
Nebraska institutions holding additional materials.

During the 1940s, fears of sexual “perversions”
in America grew markedly. These fears spilled over into the political realm.
Joseph McCarthy and his fellow Nebraska Republican Kenneth Wherry figured
prominently in this historic movement.

South Omaha’s Lithuanian
immigrant families wanted their church preserve their ethnic heritage. They
accordingly forced their bishop to accept Lithuanian replacements for St.
Anthony’s Polish pastor and the Ursuline Sisters who had served at the parish
school.

John Brady volunteered in 1898
to join the First Nebraska Infantry Regiment, United States Volunteers. His
journal and letters sent home to Nebraska during sixteen months in the
Philippines reveal misgivings about the conduct of the war, however, and in
later life he spoke out against militarism.

The author describes twenty-nine
Nebraska History articles concerning the Nebraska Territory. Topics discussed
include the Territorial System and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Government and
Politics, Economic and Social Development, Land Acquisition and Agriculture,
Indians and Indian Affairs, Military Affairs, and Prelude to Statehood.

This annotated bibliography
includes Nebraska History articles on the territorial system and the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, government and politics, economic and social
development, land acquisition and agriculture, Indians and Indian affairs,
military affairs, and the quest for statehood. There are also suggestions for
further reading from other sources.

Richard Tanner (1869-1943) travelled
with a circus as a crack shot when he was a young man. Later he had a medical
career in Norfolk and then recreated himself as “Diamond Dick,” a medicine
show practitioner who claimed to have known all the famous characters of the
Wild West.

A year-long battle over the
appointment of a new Lincoln postmaster followed the election of Grover
Cleveland. Eight major candidates supported by prominent Nebraska Democrats
sought the position. At the last minute a previously unmentioned candidate
with less service to the party emerged and won the job.

At Nebraska‟s first fair J
Sterling Morton provided a personal view of the Territory‟s
agricultural history. He condemned the financial speculation in town lots
that had led to the panic of 1857 but proudly recounted the bountiful harvests
that followed.

George and Sarah Joslyn were Nebraska’s wealthiest family
in the early 1900s. Their lavish lifestyle was widely recognized. Their
philanthropy, less well known in their time, still influences Omaha’s
cultural life.

Two Abraham Lincoln ambrotypes (in-camera original images)
are housed in Nebraska. One portrait commemorates the day in 1858 when
Lincoln won the acquittal of an accused murderer. The circumstances of the
second ambrotype are less certain, but some scholars believe that it
commemorates Lincoln’s nomination to run for president in 1860.

Spotted Tail worked from 1866 on to create Brulé tribal
consensus, gradually accepting the changes forced upon his people by
government support for western settlement while doing all he could to protect
their interests. Adaptation to reservation life was an unpopular and
difficult process, but Spotted Tail understood

In 1870 Grinnell joined a Yale professor on a summer expedition
to collect fossils in the West. He returned to Nebraska repeatedly over sixty
years, recording his experiences in many books and articles.

The fossil-hunting expedition that brought Grinnell to the
Sand Hills in 1870 was the first of many trips recorded in his essays and
books. This reminiscence contrasts the relative ease of travel into the West
by train in Grinnell‟s time and the experience of emigrants bound for
Utah or California just a few years earlier. [Published under pen name Ornis]

Other universities initially refused to accept Japanese
American students forced into World War II concentration camps. The
University of Nebraska was among the first to welcome them. It eventually
enrolled more Nisei students than all but two other institutions. The author
asserts that this controversial acceptance

resulted from humanitarian decisions made by a few
individuals in Lincoln.

This article examines available evidence in order to
determine the extent to which John Brown’s Cave and the adjacent Mayhew log
cabin in Nebraska City may or may not have contributed to the escape of
fugitive slaves. It has been alleged that through Brown’s direct involvement,
the “cave” was an important Underground Railroad station, sheltering scores
if not hundreds of black fugitives who were making their way out of bondage.
The article debunks the story of the cave, concluding that it is an example
of folklore that demonstrates how generations of Nebraskans have come to
regard the crusade against slavery as a meaningful part of their past.

Robert W Furnas’ publication Nebraska Press Recollections,
a state press history completed in 1874 endeavored to provide dates of
establishment, suspension, and change of ownership of Nebraska newspapers
that existed at the time and/or prior to 1874. While largely accurate, it
failed to mention the Nebraska Herald of Nemaha. A 42-year feud ensued
regarding which was the oldest continuously published paper in the state: the
Nebraska Advertiser [Brownville] or the Nebraska City News.

A rare ferrotype shows five enlisted men who marched with
Crook. Posing after the Starvation March, they wear a variety of uniform
pieces and non-regulation civilian-style clothing in this portrait that
commemorates their camaraderie during the Great Sioux War.

Nebraska farm families were economic units, dependent upon
the labor of children as well as adults. Children’s responsibilities ranged
from simple daily chores to being the family’s primary farmers or housekeepers.

The story of Nemaha County’s
African American community involved a relatively small number people over a
relatively short span of time. However, the experiences of these early black
settlers raise questions whose answers may illustrate the broader African
American experience in Nebraska. These questions concern the significance of
small, one generational settlement as well as other patterns of African
American settlement, such as those centered on the farmstead or the small
community settled around employment (like the railroad). Other questions
involve the interaction between blacks and whites, black social status, and
racism in the press as well as the communities at large.

Led by determined chiefs like Red Cloud, Gall, and Crazy
Horse, the Lakota Sioux resisted federal control during the first years of
transition to the reservation system. Only after the Battle of Wounded Knee
and the Sioux Bill of 1889 did the federal overnment gain the upper hand.

Colonel Ranald S Mackenzie’s men encircled the villages of
Red Cloud and Red Leaf under cover of darkness one night in 1876. They
confiscated horses and weapons and drove the Indians into Camp Robinson and
eventually onto reservations in Dakota Territory and western Nebraska. This
dismounting and disarming campaign helped bring the Sioux War to a close the
following year.

The Missouri Mounted Volunteers invited a civilian artist,
William Henry Tappan, to accompany them and create a record of their service
in Nebraska in 1848. Tappan wrote in his diary about the soldiers’ daily
lives: not only their frequent encounters with Native Americans, but also
their buffalo hunts, games and entertainments, even a religious service.

This article includes letters from two military men
stationed in Nebraska. A private describes for his brother at home the daily
routines and distractions of the Missouri Mounted Volunteers. A captain in
the regular army serving as commander of Fort Childs complains to his superior
about inadequate shelter, clothing, and

Features characteristic of the Gothic Revival Style appear
in some traditional I-houses built in Nebraska between 1860 and 1900. Local
builders introduced new methods and materials, however, creating a regional
version of the I-house.

The trial of Mary Sheedy and alleged co-conspirator
“Monday” McFarland for the murder of Mary’s husband, John Sheedy, undermined
the integrity of the “booster ethos,” shook middle class confidence, and
exposed deep racial, gender, sexual, moral, and psychological tensions that
threatened social order in Lincoln’s post-frontier society.

Convicted on circumstantial evidence of the murder of two
white travelers in 1871, the Indian James Whitewater spent more than
seventeen years in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. He eventually won release
when the governor pardoned him in recognition of his good conduct while
incarcerated.

Teachers in the small town schools of the West in the
early years of the twentieth century were often young and inexperienced.
Muirl Dorrough was more capable and devoted than many, and her attendance at
the Alliance Junior Normal School increased her motivation and raised her
standards.

Lester, one of a number of Pike‟s Peak diarists,
faithfully recorded his observations and experiences. His diary recounts the
journey of eight Iowans who traveled across Nebraska Territory and into the
Rocky Mountains in hopes of finding gold there. When he found no gold, he
continued west to California.

Hanson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (1896-1981),
attributed his musical inspiration to the Nebraska prairies where he grew up.
Bachenberg provides biographical details and a selected list of recordings.

While the Skirmish at Grand Prairie had no material effect
upon the course of the war, more Nebraska troops were captured by the enemy
in this skirmish and few of Nebraska’s Civil War soldiers suffered more
hardship, fear, and frustration than Lieutenant Polock’s First Nebraska
orphans in Arkansas and Missouri that summer and fall of 1864.

Henry Daum wrote to his sweetheart at Fort Robinson in
1890 while he was serving with the Eighth US Infantry at Pine Ridge Agency.
He warned her not to believe what she might read in the papers about the
Wounded Knee Massacre.

In 1998 the Nebraska State Historical Society began to
generate digital images from the glass plate negatives of the famous Butcher
photographs of homesteading on the Plains. The new digital images reveal
details previously hidden in the shadowed areas of prints made from the
negatives.

Solomon Butcher’s Custer County photographs include views
of women settlers, even rare images of pregnant women. All the pioneer women
pictured clearly made an effort to maintain a fashionable appearance.

Hollingworth, an experimental psychologist, used science
to solve problems. An embarrassing failure as a public speaker at an important
event early in his career led him to write a book on the psychology of
audiences.

The development of WJAG radio from a pioneer stage to a
full service facility with a liberal schedule of local information and
entertainment catapulted Karl Stefan to popularity and to Congress in 1934.
Stefan’s victory is an early example of the power of electronic media
exposure and its potential impact on the political process.

Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Missouri between
Sioux City, Iowa, and Pickstown, South Dakota, involved not only the terrain
but also the plants and animals of the region. The Corps of Discovery also
made its first contact with Sioux Indians during that part of its expedition.

James D Calhoun spent twenty-five years, from 1869 to
1894, in southeast Nebraska working as a newspaperman and laboring in
Democratic Party politics. Calhoun could delight his friends and readers with
wonderful anecdotes, sometimes blurring reality and fiction.

Twenty-two-year-old Thomas Edwin
Keen, a Pennsylvania native, joined up with a group of diverse soldiers from
Nebraska to fight on the Union side of the Civil War. He left behind twenty-three letters he
wrote to family members between 1861 and 1864, providing a vivid description
of his experiences as a private in the First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry.

Anti-Irish feeling in the mid-nineteenth century led Irish
immigrants in Nebraska to celebrate St Patrick’s Day with parades, religious
services, balls, and some rowdiness. By World War I most Americans had joined
the celebration, happy to be considered Irish for a day.

Blaser draws on historical, geographical, and literary
sources for answers to the question “Where is Nebraska?” (Six other writers
contribute their ideas in short articles that follow, and Blaser responds in
a concluding article.)

Thomas considers Nebraska a transitional area, the
Midlands linking the Midwest and the Great Plains. The diversity of its
landscapes, its population, and its occupational opportunities set Nebraska
apart.

Karlis Ulmanis studied and then taught briefly at the
University of Nebraska as a Latvian refugee. As president of Latvia years
later, he shared his enthusiasm for Nebraska traditions with citizens of his
country.

Nebraska was one of the last states west of the
Mississippi to approve woman’s suffrage. The men of the state opposed giving
the vote to women primarily because of ethnic or religious tradition. Fear
that women would support prohibition swayed many men. Even some women
opposed woman suffrage, dreading the social changes that might result.

Early nurse training schools, created by hospitals, used
haphazard curricula and exploited their students as a cheap work force. By
1940 the few remaining schools emphasized high professional standards.

Oliver N Chaffee and his crew endured hardships during the
survey of the western boundary of Nebraska. Despite those difficulties and
the limitations of the surveying equipment of their day, they achieved
remarkably accurate readings of time and distance.

The long-held belief that space and time were independent
entities has given way to a more realistic notion that the two are
intertwined. The appearance and importance of any region tends to change over
time. The spirit of an era both drives and reflects such changes in space.

The Federal government has
invested significant resources in Sioux County since the treaties with the
Lakota Sioux freed the land for Euro-American settlement. It has been the
major partner in providing infrastructure funding for projects: large
irrigation systems, small pipeline systems, relief aid, and restoration of
the land. Federal farm commodity support programs, conservation programs, and
other federal programs continue, sometimes with unexpected results

Fling, who taught history at the University of Nebraska
for more than forty years, led a drive to place better-qualified history
teachers in high schools. He called for the introduction of a scientific
historical method.

Nebraska’s penal, reform, and charitable institutions were
all in need of restructuring in 1935. Governor Cochran appointed advocates of
social welfare reform and long-term planning. He also applied for all
available federal assistance.

Ogallala’s fame as the wild and wooly “Cowboy Capital”
rests on a few well-publicized incidents. Providing law enforcement at the
end of the Texas longhorns’ trail usually involved no more than tracking down
local rustlers and horse thieves.

Maud Nuquist was known only for her work with
Women‟s Clubs before she became a candidate in the 1934 Democratic
gubernatorial primary. Her platform called for professional, not political,
control of state departments.

Promoter Joseph Brown brought the first self-propelled
vehicle, a steam wagon, to Nebraska City in 1862. Although his machine broke
down and had to be abandoned only a few miles west of town, it did inspire
trail improvement in Otoe County and beyond.

The prosperous businesses of the Dietz family included
lumber yards in Nebraska and a coal mining company in Wyoming. The couple
traveled widely and accumulated large art and book collections. They
generously supported Omaha institutions

During the 1920s, Norfolk
station WJAG developed from a bulletin service of the Norfolk Daily
News to a broadcast station that dispensed a variety of information and
entertainment, and from hobby status to a business dependent on advertising.
Future Congressman Karl Stefan became the area’s first widely-known on-air
personality. Of three Nebraska newspaper publishers who established radio
stations in the early 1920s, only WJAG
continued to broadcast beyond the 1920s, celebrating its 75th anniversary in
1997.

Hollywood’s 1934 version of A Lost Lady disappointed
Willa Cather so much that she prohibited further dramatization of her work.
Only when copyrights expired after seventy-five years did producers gain
access to her writings.

Prince Hall Masonry is an African American fraternal
organization that arose because blacks were excluded from white Masonic
lodges. During the 1920s Prince Hall Masonry in Nebraska experienced a brief
boom, but by the middle of the decade a bust ensued. The 1924-25 industrial
slump combined with the downturn in the agricultural sector curbed the influx
of African American Americans to the state. At the onset of the Great
Depression, Prince Hall Masonry was a weakened but viable and vital
institution among the limited number of African Americans in Nebraska.

The surrender of Crazy Horse and the members of his
village at the Red Cloud Agency in May 1877 marked the end of the Great Sioux
War. The author explores the influence of Lakota political organization and
kinship networks on Crazy Horse’s decision to accept reservation life.

Young Man Afraid of His Horses played an important role in
the Lakota peoples’ struggle to maintain their traditional way of life. After
the death of Crazy Horse, Young Man Afraid sought ways for his people to
adapt peacefully to the changing world of the reservation rather than trying
to restore the grandeur of the old life through obstructionist politics.

The Pawnee tribe actively resisted the US Army and the
white Americans moving west in the early nineteenth century. An outbreak of
smallpox, increasing numbers of white invaders, and perpetual skirmishes with
other tribes diminished the Pawnees’ strength until they were placed on a
reservation in Nebraska in 1854.

Emanuel Wolfe, a dry goods merchant in Neligh, took
photographs that document his changing world. From 1900 until 1930 his
large-format camera recorded images of family members, neighbors, homes,
businesses, and events.

Fort Laramie’s officers knew that scurvy was a major
source of illness and death among their soldiers. They were aware that fresh
vegetables produced locally were needed, but they did not succeed in having
them cultivated on the post.

Rosa Hudspeth (1864-1911) was a newspaper writer and
reporter and then an editor of the Stuart Ledger [Nebraska] from
1901-1907. Her brief career at the Ledger is illustrative of the
difficulties women faced in managing small businesses and dealing with
employees, the public, and local politicians.

Memorial Stadium was a major construction project
requiring significant resources in the 1920s. Students, alumni, and state
residents were strongly encouraged to contribute even though Nebraska was
just then experiencing an economic depression.

Chicago journalist Eugene Field asserted that former
President Hayes owned property in Omaha that included a saloon. This
accusation, which turned out to be true, was highly embarrassing for Hayes, a
symbol of the temperance cause..

Maggie Gehrke kept a daily journal of entertaining road
stories on trips that she took with her husband Edward. This account of an
excursion to Ainsworth is an example of the Gehrkes’ quest for adventure and
their teamwork in the face of mishaps on the road.

The focus and status of Prince Hall Masonry in Nebraska
changed as World War I was ending. The African-American fraternity began to
provide community service and to seek to expand civil rights. The Great
Migration brought additional members into the state’s lodges and made it
possible for them to form the independent Prince Hall Grand Lodge and Grand
Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star of Nebraska.

In 1876 Nebraskan John Morris patented the first design
for a multi-catch mouse trap that enjoyed great commercial success. Its most
innovative feature, widely copied, was a hinged outer door that allowed the
trap to function repeatedly before it was emptied.